Saturday, July 17, 2010

Great Day at the Range...



...at the cowboy action shooting match at Pawnee Station in Ft. Collins. It was a super match, and my Sweetie had her first clean match, not to mention that she opened a big ole can of whoop ass on yours truly in 5 out of 6 stages! She shot superbly...CONGRATS are in order!

My first match — heads up, Wallaby Jack! — shooting a manly SXS with 2 triggers, an ancient Stevens 311 12 gauge coach gun. I figure I lst a couple of seconds a stage on the reloads, but it actually went much better than I thought it would. In fact, it was fun. I called up "Goatneck Clem Gunsmithing," Fred Bursey, and ordered one of his CAS-ready Stoeger SXS as a main match gun. Now, sadly, all I gotta do is practice!

BTW, here is a beautiful essay by Kevin Williamson over at NRO that I strongly urge you all to read it and pass it on:
To use lethal force in self-defense is the ultimate declaration of independence, a kind of momentary secession from the authority of the government whose laws and prisons and police officers have, in that moment, failed the citizen. To acknowledge the right to self-defense — and the concomitant right to be forearmed against aggressors — is to acknowledge that some things are outside the state and its authority, or at least that some moments are outside the state and its authority.

The horror that progressives feel for gun owners is in many ways like the horror they feel for homeschoolers, whom they recognize, correctly, as one of the few truly radical movements in America. Prof. Robin West of Georgetown University’s law school offers a typical reaction to the phenomenon: “The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.” God defend the holy tax base!

Homeschooling families in fact have higher average incomes than non-homeschool families, a fact that Professor West acknowledges and then magics away through the device of the “radically fundamentalist movement family,” the one she locates on tarps in parking lots. Like Mr. Ignatius, Professor West is forthright about the statist origins of her horror: “Parents in many states have full authority, free of all state oversight, to determine the content of their children’s education,” a situation almost as unendurable as life in a 1,000-square-foot house. Professor West writes longingly of the golden age when practically all education was conducted under the tutelage of the state and opting out of the system was forbidden — and “parents who did so were criminals.”

You will not be surprised to read her lamenting a “constitutional culture” dominated by “militias, gun collectors, and ideologues constructing, with little help from courts and no resistance from liberals, an individual Right to Bear Arms.” She connects this Second Amendment horror to other challenges to unlimited state supremacy — the anti-tax movement and citizen border patrols — and, like David Ignatius, she cites Hobbes, framing the debate as Leviathan vs. anarchy, leaving no room for well-ordered liberty under constitutionally limited government: If those rubes out on the tarps can fill the young skulls of their plenteous broods with any old rubbish, without the least privity or countenance of authority, then they’re bound to get funny ideas about guns and taxes and illegal immigrants. And they are bound to chafe at having their lives run by Georgetown law professors.

Just as state schooling is not about education, but about the state, gun control is not about guns: It’s about control. A citizen who can fend for himself when the predators come or the schools fail is less inclined to look to the state for sustenance and oversight in other areas of life. To progressives, that’s an invitation to anarchy. To the men who wrote the Second Amendment, it was a condition of citizenship in a free republic. It’s what free men did, and do.

14 comments:

jimbob86 said...

Best thing I have read all week.

Dave S. said...

Congrats on ditching the trombone and using a real cowboy shotgun.

Kansas Scout said...

I fail to understand the constant attacks on the public school. The public school system is the bedrock of our democracy and should be supported and guarded as such. While it is not perfect, it's a hell of a lot better than not having it. In my schools, I learned to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the content of the Constitution as well as the history of our Nation, among all the rest.This condemnation from religious fundamentalists is wrong headed.

Wallaby Jack said...

I'm PROUD of you.




.... (unless there ain't TWO triggers on thet new Steoger ....) ...

Dave S. said...

Well, in high school, I learned to avoid gang members and keep it down to a dull roar while my teacher read the newspaper.

Oh, and I'm an atheist.

I'm sure there are some good schools out there. But if you're a parent in, say, D.C. or Detroit, you have every right and responsibility to condemn the school system and take your kid out.

JohnL in TX said...

Kansas Scout, you don't mention when you were a public school student. Forty five years ago, when I was in public school, I too was taught to respect God, Country, the Constitution, and the Flag. We recited the Pledge every morning and it was quite an honor to be selected to lead the recitation from the front of the class... only the best-behaved and courteous student from the week before was chosen.

Today, however, it's different. The history our children hear is a revisionist's history. The Flag, the Pledge, our Constitution, our Founding Fathers... these are things far too often relegated to insignificance if not blatantly ridiculed.

The public education of today in no way resembles the public education of the past. Today our children are given condoms, taught that "marriage" can mean anything you want it to mean, and that government's ever-increasing role in our everyday life is to protect us... to save us.

Kansas Scout, I would respectfully submit that the public schools of today should absolutely be attacked. We should be openly expressing our outrage that our children can not spell, can not perform basic arithmetic calculations, can not identify common geographical elements of our country, and can not formulate or express their own opinions about the founding principles upon which our Nation was founded.

And Sir, the public school system is NOT the bedrock of our democracy. The words Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness come to mind....

Anonymous said...

Kansas scout- I learned all that stuff too- 40+ years ago. they don't teach it anymore! the mushroom

Kansas Scout said...

I do not concede the argument that public schools no longer teach these things. At least in Kansas I believe they still do. If yours does not work to change it for the better. Much of what people think or have been told about public schools is pure malarky. Aberrations found on the coasts do not reality make for everywhere else.
I support our public schools and if we want to maintain our democracy we better make sure they are what they should be.

Max said...

You apparently live in a bubble. Where I went to school 20 years ago they taught no such thing. No pledge, no country. Our American history class lasted 1 quarter and skipped most of the founding. Our civil war history was much longer, at least the slavery aspect, and what a terrible people we were.
My children no longer attend public school. Any help requested by my children was met with, "I'm busy". Any complaint lodged with the school board was ignored or met with "We are understaffed, and underfunded." Mean time the staff has every other Friday off with pay.
My kids get a better education in a shorter time. They start 15 days later than public, get out 30 days earlier, and test Post High School on their EOG tests.
Public school is an entrenched system just like all politics.

Anonymous said...

If you are ordering a SXS from Goat Neck forget the Stoeger and get a SKB. When the better half changed from a very slick Stoeger to a GoatNeck SKB she cut 7 seconds off her 6 shot time. No way is she giving up her SKB.

Rastus said...

Well Ms. Prof. Robin West, do you think next time you see Obama you could get him to tell the IRS to leave my wife and I alone because we homeschool and obviously don't support the tax base; by your observation? I need a another gun safe and bass boat next spring...and some vacation money.

Kansas Scout, I can see you are a faithful and patriotic person who is passionate and wants the best for your nation, but your nation's schools have thumbed their nose at you. What you say happens just does not happen. Your idyllic view of schools which would be great for the nation, just does not exist. Have you not heard of the NEA, the Department of Education? Brother, that was lost several decades ago...do you ever get out of your school district in Kansas? Do you still listen to the CBS Evening news, or ABC or NBC?

Go read the new history books, the NEA statements, the Dept. of Education rules and see that what you think the nation does is denegrated and dismissed as extremism....if you believe otherwise you are just plain wrong.

Congrats to your sweetie MB...check out how Jessie Abbate whupped up on most of the boys at Phil Strader's 2010 Pro Am.

Anonymous said...

I would like to add: An informed populace is the bedrock of our REPUBLIC! The United States of America is a Federalist Republic. It is not a Democracy! We simply use a "democratic" process to elect our representatives and to approve, or dis-approve some laws, etc. References to "democracy" are often over-used and unfortunately, mis-guided and mis-understood. Democracy is mob rule, with the people voting on and deciding everything. It's also chaos and it has never worked. A democracy is what they are referring to when they say "Power to the people". Unfortunately, that's code for "Power to the ruling class". The USSR often referred to itself as a "democracy". We all know about "The People's Republic of...." jokes too. Those are democracies. By the way, all of these facts are now often considered to be obsolete "beliefs"!

In a free republic, nobody should be allowed to have a monopoly on "knowledge". In so called democracies, attempts are often made to steal it though. Hitler, Mao and the Soviets used book burnings as a way to eliminate what they didn't want you to know. You were allowed only to read what they wanted you to and of course, they took over the schools entirely. Some modern education systems, although somewhat less barbaric, essentially do the same thing today.

I attended public schools in the middle of the last century and got a great education. Our son however, got a very politically-left-of-center education at the "turn" of the new one! He resisted though and survived, as he was taught to just nod, when he really meant "I think that you're full of shit"! Then, he went and did what was right by our Gun-Clinging, Religion-Loving, Constitution-Respecting, nineteenth-century values.

Life Member

Mark Horning said...

Half the homeschoolers I know are religous, the other half are HARD Core Atheists.

Much of the complaint is that the schools seem to merely be vessels for indoctrination in the "Religon of the State" or the latest Liberal religion, Gaia Worshiping Extreem Environmentalism.

Will said...

Kansas Scout:

Quote: "I do not concede the argument that public schools no longer teach these things. At least in Kansas I believe they still do."

You "believe" they do, but you are really saying you "think they still do".

Go spend some time observing the appropriate classes in junior and senior high schools in your area. Be prepared for a major disappointment.

I went to high school in the late 60's. Even then, I could see discrepancies between what I read in the Libraries, and my textbooks. Due to my extensive reading, I did not grow up to be a socialist Democrat, as my siblings did.